Devastating evidence that the welfare state is broken

WHEN the welfare state was set up everybody understood the principle of national insurance.

PUBLISHED: 00:01, Tue, Feb 19, 2013

Millions will be left thinking that working for a living is a mug’s game.

The intention was that every working man and woman would make weekly contributions to fund a safety net that would be there when they fell on hard times to tide them over until they were back on their feet again.

There was never any intention of facilitating long-term dependency as a lifestyle choice, still less of issuing the most benefits in cash and kind to those who had seldom, if ever, paid into the system.

But somehow we have ended up with a system that offers to build a taxpayerfunded mansion for a jobless mother of 11 who first became pregnant at 14.

Heather Frost’s enormous family already occupies two council houses that have been knocked together.

Now her local authority is proposing to build her from scratch a six-bedroom home with three bathrooms and two sitting rooms.

And far from expressing gratitude or any long-term ambition to become self-reliant she feels entitled to issue a warning of what will follow if she finds this new accommodation unsuitable.

Millions will be left thinking that working for a living is a mug’s game

“If I go there and I say to them I don’t like it or it’s too small then they will just have to build me a bigger one,” says the 36-year-old.

At a time when so many people are making so many sacrifices just to keep their heads above water this case constitutes a heavy blow to national morale.

Millions will be left thinking that working for a living is a mug’s game.